Back from the RadCon convention in Pasco, Washington. Great fun, great people, great folks running everything. I want to thank Bob Brown for the fantastic job he did. Kris and I had a blast.
And talk about feeling like an old guy. Wow, the convention was swarming with young readers and fans. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say at least 75% of the convention was under 25. Maybe more. Does my heart good to see the kids coming into the conventions again.
A couple of interesting conversations happened at RadCon as well about agents. Basically, over the weekend, three different people asked me if I could give some advice about agents. My first question was always, “Have you been reading my blog? I may not be the right person to ask.”
Their response was no, they haven’t been reading these Killing Sacred Cows posts. I told them to do so and read all the comments afterwards as well, but they insisted on asking me their question anyway. All three had the same common issue. All three couldn’t get their agent to talk to them, to mail out their book, to respond to any kind of communication. They wanted to know what I thought they should do.
Note: All three had gotten an agent, all three were published writers. All three were basically stopped writing by their employee. I have no idea if I helped any of them, or if they will show up here and actually read these blogs. But it sure made me sad.
Sad for the state of publishing, sad for the state of new art coming into writing. This current system will change, as systems in publishing always do, but we will lose a generation or more of writers along the way.
Another writer on a panel went on and on and on about how you can’t make any money writing fiction these days. I just sat there sort of trying not to laugh, then asked him point blank how much a writer made if their book hit a hardback bestseller list in just royalties, not counting all the other income streams from such a hit. (You know, cost of book times 10% royalty to be low times 100,000 copies which might hit a list, might not, but it’s low.) $25 book times 10% times 100,000 copies. Luckily, that’s no money.
The writer made some comment about it being a fluke that anyone hit a bestseller list and I asked why it was a fluke when there were 1,530 different spots last year on any one of the major bestseller lists. And some writers only hit the Publisher’s Weekly list while others hit the USA Today list while others hit the New York Times bestseller list, which means there were far more. Actually, last year, 660 different books hit the hardcover PW bestsellers list.
Yeah, can’t make any money at this business. I make a nice living at this business and wasn’t even close to a list last year. Just head-shaking how silly and ground into myths many writers want to stay. They sure won’t let facts and math get in the way of their belief. It’s why some of these Killing Sacred Cows posts make people angry. I made that guy angry this weekend simply by giving him facts and math. He wanted to hold onto his belief because it excused his not working, his laziness, his inability to learn how to write commercial fiction. Just easier to blame the system than himself.
But besides those sad moments, it was great fun, great meals, great time with everyone, including some old friends I hadn’t seen for a while. Thanks again, Bob, and everyone at RadCon who put on such a great convention. Thanks for letting us be a guest. We’ll see you next year.
We are experiencing the snowiest February EVER recorded–EVER!–in my region, so everyone’s got cabin fever. Which sure makes the con sound fun!
I “grew up” in the romance genre (where I published fourteen novels before I turned full-time to writing fantasy), and I still hang out with a lot of romance writers; and the attitude to money and bestsellerdom has always been different there, since it’s such a commercially successful genre. That is to say, a lot of romance writers make a living from their writing, and a significant percentage of them become bestsellers. (If I’d been on that panel, I could’ve ground the entertainment to a halt for about ten minutes JUST by listing the names of my own personal friends-or-acquaintances who’ve been on the NYT bestseller list within the past few years.)
It’s not a fluke, and it’s not something that only happens to distant strangers. In fact, there are any number of writers on The List who set that as a specific goal and worked toward it with a plan. Nor is that info a big secret. Some of them–Charlaine Harris and Janet Evanovich immediately come to mind–have talked publicly about how their current #1 NYT hardcover bestselling series were the result of their developing a deliberate plan to figure out what they were good at and wanted to write that would -also- have the widest potential audience, because they wanted to achieve the commercial success that had thus far eluded them as novelists.
But, yeah, one always encounters people who, instead of saying, “I don’t have the success I want; so what shall I do to change that?” =instead= say, “I don’t have the success that I want, so therefore I emphatically define such success as unattainable.” (Alternate version: “It’s everyone ELSE’S fault that I don’t have the success I want.” Sometimes it is indeed someone else’s fault in this business, but dwelling on that won’t get you where you want to be. So move on and try again.)
RE the writers with the agents… Boy, is that familiar! Indeed, I was just such a writer. More than once, alas. (I didn’t say I learned QUICKLY. Just that I learned.)
Laura
I agree completely, Laura, especially about the difference in attitudes from romance to science fiction. One is focused on business, the other has mostly writers who run from business at the fastest speeds possible. Kris and I are constantly telling people to either go to RWA National or at least buy the cds for the knowledge. Even if you don’t write romance. Fantastic business stuff. Very few ever follow that advice. Business seems to “soil” writing for art for some reason. Head-shaking silly. But many writers believe that.
With all the discussion here about agents, I sure didn’t expect to run into the myth is such force this weekend, especially at a small convention. Kris and Chris and Steve York did a Bad Agent Sydney panel, with a cut-out of Sydney the cat. I wish I could have attended because for every good myth-busting piece of advice, I heard that Chris York would hold up Sydney in front of her face and give the standard agent advice. If you haven’t been following the Bad Agent Sydney posts and site, you should. Fantastically funny, unless you find yourself believing in most of the myths. Then it will just make you mad.
I really annoyed another panel member on a panel when they made some sort of snide comment about my speed and how hard I must work to do four novels a year. I laughed and said I did a bunch more than that unless I was being lazy or busy with something else. Then I did the math for them. You know, “the math” that just makes writers angry because it exposes the dirty truth about our work ethic.
This response is past 250 words. One manuscript page is 250 words. If I wrote this much fiction every day, I would finish one book per year. Heaven forbid that I can write 250 words in about 10-15 minutes. Heaven forbid I can work two or three hours per day and produce 10 plus novels and a bunch of short stories per year. Imagine if I actually worked at writing 8 hours per day. Or even 6 hours per day. Yikes. But luckily for all the myth holders, I have lots of interests and only work on my writing from about 10 in the evening to 3 in the morning, with a break for an hour of television and a snack in the middle. I feel like I hardly work at my writing, so I seldom talk about how much I produce.
But this weekend, I sure made a couple writers angry with me for cutting down their fantastic pace of one novel every year or so. I’ve got to learn to keep my mouth shut at times. At least I didn’t ask them what they did all day with their time. That really gets them annoyed.
I’ve found the math and myth-busting very helpful. I’m producing more than ever these days. Mostly writing in the morning before going to my full-time job and I still have time to complete six books this year as long as I keep working. And that leaves my evenings free to spend with my family.
Thank you for once again coming to RadCon and sharing your from-the-trenches wisdom! I needed that. Couldn’t agree more on the speed and the math. My problem has always been with sending stuff out, and being discouraged by the guidelines. So, this time, really taking your advice and ignoring all those “no (this)” and “only (that)” … going for it shotgun style. Scares the hell out of me, but here goes. If They come after me for it, I’ll just tell Them it was your fault
– C.
I had a little trouble finding the site to order the RWA Nationals Recordings so I figured I’d post the link and save everyone else a little time:
https://rwa.billspro.com/catalog/
I have to say that the workshops look pretty cool (my favorite workshop title is How Not to Suck). Also, you don’t have to wait for the cds to come in the mail, they’re downloads. That’s probably the best part for me, I can get a little impatient.
Anyway, back to the grind.
Steve
Thanks, Steve. There are some panels like “Show me the Money” and interviews with Nora and others that are priceless. And a few years back an accounting program about certain types of accounting down in some book contracts saved Kris and I thousands. Great stuff from RWA every year.
Thanks, Christine. Glad to help. It is scary, isn’t it, but the worst thing they can say is “Nope, sorry.” That’s the worst.
And remember, form letters these days are “Get an agent.” It’s just a form. Doesn’t mean they didn’t look at your book, just means your book didn’t catch them or it doesn’t fit at the current time in their list. Nothing more. Keep firing.
Cheers
Dean
I spent the weekend at Life, the Universe & Everything. My first con as a pro-sold author. It was an experience being able to be on panels and be in the green room and other places where other pro-sold authors — from me all the way up to Brandon Sanderson — could just eat munchies and shoot the s**t.
A lot of people seemed to really like their agents, and thought their agents were wonderful and that these agents had helped them enormously. These personal stories seem to indicate that not all is lost in agentdom. That there are agents who are very good at what they do, and who do not treat their clients badly, and sometimes function as a trusted partner — not a false idol before which authors have to grovel for scraps and favor.
Then again, at least one author at LTUE felt like his high-profile agent had utterly used him to get two “free” commissions — where the author had done 99% of the work to secure the deal with the house and the agent had collected 15% for doing almost nothing — and now that this author wanted this agent to get out there and beat the bushes and shop a new project, the agent was sitting on his hands.
Which instantly reminded me of the many stories told here in the comments about how big-list agents can and do ignore or abandon their ‘smaller’ clients because it’s way more common sense — for the agent — to focus on the big-list authors, rather than work with and help someone who’s brand new or only has a handful of more modest sales.
All of this was anecdotal, naturally, and everyone was approaching the issue from different levels.
I know since I’ve been participating in a “closed” pro-am forum, the issue is something of a ‘political’ one. The other pro-ams have opinions on agents that vary, and people feel very strongly about their experiences and what the best course of action for a new author should be.
Dean, your posts have been a central point of conversation in that forum, so people are obviously paying attention to what you have to say. Laura two, as you both seem to have become inextricably linked on this matter.
To my mind, this conversation seems like one worth having — somewhat similar to the e-book debate that took everyone and everything by storm a week or two ago. As the system and the way things work evolves, old or perhaps stagnant methods of getting things done will inevitably come into question.
Ironically, I find myself at opposite ends on both of those.
I’m a bit of a codger, when it comes to prognosticating about how e-books will sweep paper print into the dustbin of history. I’m not even convinced that e-books will occupy 50% market share within 20 years, to say nothing of “killing” paper publishing entirely.
At the same time e-books and direct-to-market e-publishing seem to circumvent both agents and publishers alike. No, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable filter for the mountains of vanity crap. Not yet. But with the necessity of both agents and New York publishers being called into question under the anticipated e-volution model, it’s worth examining the current model that’s existed since the 90′s — where the agent is more or less in the driver’s seat and the writer is just along for the ride — and asking if that’s really a functional model for the long term.
Yeargh, I meant, “Laura too.“
Dean, just because you can “write 250 words in about 10-15 minutes” doesn’t mean everyone can, and even fewer can produce 250 publishable words every fifteen minutes day in and day out. Cut the slowpokes a little slack.
I completed 216,310 words of short fiction last year, which works out to about 592 words/day, and I know I spend more than half an hour a day writing short fiction.
The ability to write publishable material quickly is the result of a level of confidence that comes from years of experience. I know I write much faster now than I did 30+ years ago, but I don’t type any faster than I did then. I’m just more confident in the words I put on the page and now spend much less time fussing with revisions.
Presuming they aren’t simply lazy, the slowpokes may not yet have confidence in their skills, and so they get bogged down second-guessing themselves and spinning their wheels with needless revisions that consume time without necessarily adding significant quality to their manuscripts.
And thus the difference between you and me, Michael. I follow Heinlein’s Rules completely (well, I sometimes have trouble with the keeping things in the mail point (grin)) but I have no issue with rule #3, therefore I spend zero time rewriting. I do fix nits and such and cycle through back a page or so if I get stuck, and when a project stops, I follow Asimov’s rule and switch to another project that isn’t stuck until my brain figures out the first one.
And I kind of have an issue with the excuse that “fiction is harder” that is implied in your post, but again, that’s just me. Your post was about 200 words long or almost a manuscript page, maybe more than a manuscript page if done in dialog.
Sorry, an excuse is an excuse is an excuse no matter how you dress it up. Is writing a hard job? If anyone thinks so, they need to go dig a ditch for a few hours, or pull green chain, or collect garbage, or tend bar in a busy bar, or wait tables in a busy restaurant, or…or…or…. Sitting at a computer making stuff up is not a hard job. The business can be tough, that I agree with. But the job of writing fiction just isn’t in the top 2,000 tough jobs on this planet. Yet writers constantly (me included sometimes) make excuses to not write. It’s just hogwash, and if you look at the math clearly, it becomes even more clear how really effective writers are at making excuses. And pulling down those of us who don’t make excuses. (Well, at least not too many or too often. (grin))
For a full discussion on this topic, I did a Killing Sacred Cows post on this very myth.
I have to agree with Dean here. I am not a ‘fast’ writer, either, but that is mostly a 50+ hour a week job and two toddlers taking up tons of my time.
The truth is, when things are going full bore, I can reel off 1500 words an hour. Even if I only scrounge up 5 hours/week to write that makes for 7500 words a week.
That’s 4 novels per year. (7500 * 50 = 375000 words @ 90,000 per novel +/-).
That’s w/ 2 weeks vacation!
I am shocked at how much time I have now that’s I’ve stopped complaining about how little time I have and stopped obsessing over agent blogs and what *they* wanted from me.
I just write. I’m pretty new at this and much of what I have written in the past year or so is not of high quality, but it is certainly not wasted. It has helped prepare me for the good work I am doing now…
That said, if you are a very slow writer – which is fine – 250 words per day is 60000+ per year with weekends off and 2 weeks of vacation. That would mean a novel ~ every 15 months or so.
Just because DWS can write 10 books a year (or whatever) doesn’t mean you or I have to, but if we want to be writers, we have to write SOMETHING.
I doubt there’s much difference in our attitudes, Dean. I pretty much follow Heinlein’s rules, I’ve followed Asimov’s rule for decades, and I actually find non-fiction harder to write than fiction.
I think we stop making excuses (or, at least, make fewer of them) as we grow more confident in our writing ability. And that comes with experience.
So, it’s not a pure numbers game. For some writers it becomes a numbers game after developing confidence. Once you realize that you’re selling almost everything you write–and I passed that bar a long, long time ago–you gain confidence in your ability and stop second-guessing everything you do.
The slowpokes (again, not including those who are simply lazy) aren’t necessarily making excuses. They just haven’t developed confidence.
With confidence comes productivity.
Confessional: during the run-up to the novel workshop this coming weekend, there were a couple of days where I clocked over 9,000 words. Each of those two days I put in roughly 7 hours of work, with one or two breaks for the bathroom or to eat. Ordinarily I never get that kind of uninterrupted flow, but it just so happened that I got two freak days where I had nothing else going on — no work, no things to do at home — and could focus entirely on the writing.
I noticed that by the 5,000 word mark, I was usually in such a deep, deep groove, if I hadn’t been forced to eventually stop because of some external reason, like my wife and daughter telling me to quit for the day — if I’d been able to literally just keep going until exhaustion took me to bed — I might have clocked 15,000 words.
It’s a curious experience, being that completely and totally immersed in the story. It’s like the walls and the desk kind of vanish, and it’s just me banging on the keyboard like a court reporter. Things are “happening” and being “said” so quickly, I have to get them down in that instant before I lose the groove and the story becomes “inaccurate.”
Michael, I agree with the confidence issue, right up to the point where it is used as an excuse. But you are assuming I have confidence with everything I write. Nope, not even close. I’m usually scared to death I have written myself into some sort of corner, or at the beginning of a novel I’ll never be able to do it again, and near the end the complete confidence that what I have written totally sucks strikes massive fear through me every time. So confidence for me doesn’t help productivity. In fact, the more I know, the more fear I have. Being a beginner and clueless was really nice. What helps with me is just simple deadlines, both outside and self-imposed as Brad talked about. I have a deadline, I figure the math and then just stick to it.
And Brad, I agree it is a blast when things just get hammering and you are just typing as fast as you can to stay ahead of the story going on in your head. Great fun.
I liken the slow-v-fast writer debate with slow- and fast-twitch muscles. If you are born with a lot more of one than the other and you decide to get into running, that predisposes you to being a sprinter or a distance runner. You can compensate to a degree, just as you can if you are born an owl or a wren when it comes to when you rise from sleep, but it will be harder for some folks than others to do so.
Muscle fibers are mostly innate, of course, and I dunno if intellectual ability vis a vis writing is, but it’s something to consider.
Look at hundred-meter sprinters, then at marathoners. They don’t look much alike past the basic bipedal structure. Fast-twitch versus slow, and if you want to do well in either form, and by well I mean being competitive in any kind of serious race, choosing your parents is key.
I can get up at six a.m. if I must. Left alone, I never will unless the house catches on fire. I’m an owl, always have been, and see no indication that such is going to change.
As it happens, I stared out a fast writer and cranking out words in goodly amounts has not been a problem. But I know folks who are slower than I — and I’m slower than Dean — who, no matter how hard they train, they can’t screw with their speed without making it read as though, well, somebody screwed with it.
Like reeling silk, if you have the touch, you can crank. If not, you pull it slowly or you break it.
If I try to slow down and write “better,” it doesn’t help. It makes things worse. If I try to write faster, my hands get stupid.
Not an excuse, in that even if you can only manage one good page a day, you still have a book at the end of the year, but I don’t think it has anything to do with confidence, and I don’t think one speed fits all …
Well, it’s a separate subject (and one I don’t want to go on about at length), but I’m a STRONG believer in “each to their own” when it comes to process and to pace.
There is a real-world result factor viz pace, of course, which is that it’s harder to make a living or build audience if one is a slow writer, and easier if one is a fast writer. But even that’s an illusory comparison, since pace alone won’t make that difference. I can cite any number of examples of people capable of writing multiple books per year who have struggling careers (or no careers at all), and people who produce one book a year or LESS who have very good careers. Pace is an element in career-building, but it is FAR from being a deciding factor–even now, when there’s a lot of pressure on a lot of writers to produce faster. (My publisher is telling me that to achieve our goals, I’ve got to deliver two books a year. At @ 100K words each, this is a tough pace for me. Not impossible certainly, but in recent months I’ve canceled two trips and turned down some short fiction work, because this is a TOUGH pace for me.)
Writers do not write at the same pace, and what works for one person does not work for another. And what one author believes about writing or about good fiction or about process doesn’t apply to another. There is not a “right” answer here, because there are too many crucial variables for a wide variety of writers and writing processes.
I, for example, am not a fast writer. (I’m also not a fast thinker. Most books sit on my mental burner for well over a year before I can work on them; meanwhile, I’m writing other books that have already percolated.)
I’m also not a good writer. What I am is a good REwriter, and it’s very rare that something which I write for -payment- leaves my house with fewer than a dozen rewrites. This may or may not be why I am rarely asked for editorial revisions (and why my unedited work gets starred reviews and make Year’s Best Lists, etc.). Either way, it’s what works for me. What’s on my page (or on my screen) isn’t good enough to satisfy me until I’ve done a lot of rewriting. And this has actually increased, not decreased, with experience, because I have higher standards and more complex craft than I did when I was writing my early books.
However, apart from something important (ex. a submission letter, a formal interview, permanent text for my website, etc.), I don’t rewrite anything I post online or in emails. That’s why I can write it very fast. Here for example, I write so fast that my comments are full of typos, non-sentences, digressions, and redundancies. This is what happens when I write fast. To write something publishable or saleable–let alone something good enough that I actually WANT my name on it in a professional sense–I do a lot of REwriting.
I’m also someone who, having written both a lot of nonfiction and fiction, generally finds fiction much, much harder. Nonfiction mostly just has to be well-organized, to make sense and flow. Fiction needs a whole lot more creativity, invention, story logic, and craft, though, and I find it HARD. It’s not hard in the sense that cleaning kennels, waiting tables, washing muddy vegetables for 700 people, pushing a truck across Africa, or digging my car out of 13″ of snow is hard, but it’s nonetheless very hard. Or, rather, I find that doing it WELL is very hard. Cleaning kennels is hard, but LOTS of people can clean kennels WELL. Very few people can write well, though–let alone well enough to be paid for it. So doing it WELL is what I find hard about it.
Whereas, no, just slapping words on the page (as I’m doing here) isn’t hard at all. However, if these were fictional words, then, yes, I’d find this hard, too. I am not a person who experiences creative flow and a rush of ideas. Well, actually, no, I do experience it–once or twice a year, so I know exactly what it feels like, and how much fun it it, and how easily the text flows when it happens. But the other 363-364 days of the year, getting fiction down onto the page is VERY CHALLENGING for me–and making it good enough to compete professionally is even harder for me.
So I always consider “pace” talk illusory. Maybe it’s just that people who write slowly don’t believe it can be done fast, and people who write fast don’t believe it can need to be done slowly. Which common misonception about the needs and desires of others would probably explain a whole lot about sexual partners, if we extrapolate. (But I digress again.)
Obviously, there are ways to increase one’s pace, if writers apply themselves to this effort (and a heavy contract load is a REALLY GOOD motivator, I find). But, even so, speed can only increase within the context of a writer’s innate pace-range and a writer’s craft. Increasing beyond that is sometimes necessary, but not a good overall career strategy IMO.
I’ve written two books really fast, a pseudnomyic erotica novel of 50,000 words that I wrote in about 3 weeks, and a media tie-in novel of 85,000 words that I wrote in about 6 weeks. That’s not my pace. I can do it, but that’s not MY pace; in each case, it was necessary–that sort of pace was part of the contract. I COULD do it… but there were consequences. For one thing, because that’s is NOT my pace, both experiences were exceedingly unpleasant for me. I just don’t think that fast. Much more to the point, though, both books are weak work.
At that pace, I couldn’t have written longer books in time for delivery (my own books are longer–sometimes MUCH longer); and I certainly couldn’t have written GOOD books at ALL. It takes me TIME to make a book good. Genius does not flow from my muse-blessed fingers. I have to work at it–a lot, and over a period of time–to make a book good.
This is not to say a faster pace is “wrong” or “lesser” etc. It’s to say that -I- do not have a faster pace, and the math discussed here doesn’t apply to everyone–because there are a lot more factors involved in my writing pace than just how fast I type (which is pretty darn fast, actually, due to years and years of practice).
Wow, didn’t mean to start over the writing speed issue. (grin) I covered it pretty well in a chapter. And I agree completely that there is no right way for any writer to do anything in this business. Back in the chapter on this topic, I talked about how each writer should figure out their own comfortable pace. For some it might be one page per hour, for others it might be four or six pages per hour. Then go from there.
Laura (and Steve) have both pushed their pace and have discovered over time what is comfortable and what produces high-quality selling work for them. I have done the same thing (without so much about the high quality. Can’t tell with my own stuff, so I just trust the process.) I have written a 65,000 word novel in one draft and turned it in in six days from word one to the final word and turn in to editor. Is that my pace??? Oh, heavens no. That wasn’t fun, it hurt my back and hands, and they didn’t pay me anywhere near enough. But I knew I could do it by looking at the math. That’s all I’m saying. Just find what’s right for you instead of believing anyone else, including me. Find your pace (that has no excuses attached) and that produces work that sells. If you are not selling, maybe you need to speed up. If you are doing fifty rewrites, maybe you should just mail your work. But if you don’t rewrite and it’s not selling, maybe a rewrite might help you. No rules, no right way.
Just step outside the myths and figure out what works for you. So I agree with Laura and Steve completely. (And there’s a shock.(grin))
Oops. I DID “go on at length,” didn’t I!
Brad, if people at that con were mentioning my name alonside Dean’s, I hope it was clearly understood by everyone present that, of the two of us, -I- am the pretty blonde one.
These discussions about writing speed remind me of the story of the repairman called in to fix a big, expensive machine. He examines it for a bit, raps it sharply with a hammer, and the machine starts humming away. He presents his bill for $500. “But all you did was hit it with a hammer!” complains the customer. “Oh, I only billed you $5 for that. The other $495 was for knowing where to hit it.”
Any halfway-competent typist can write well over a thousand words an hour. It’s knowing /what/ to type that’s the trick. Although as Brad and Dean noted above, when you’re really in the groove you’re just channeling your muse, and the trick is to keep up.
My problem is a tendency to binge writing. Once I get started I don’t want to stop, to the detriment of my sleep requirements, so I’m sometimes reluctant to start. Deadlines help wonderfully with that.
Speed has never been much of an issue for me. I’ve timed myself, without consciously trying to write faster or slower, and I’ve found that I can churn out one manuscript page in somewhere between 5-25 minutes, so I know that I do average about one page every 15 minutes. While I’ve written as much as 2000 words per day for several weeks at a time, I find that after a while I feel like I’m running dry after writing that much per day. When I cut back to 1250-1500 per day, I can just go on and on and on. After a long project, though, I usually like to take some time off from writing, and then follow it up with one or two short pieces before I launch into something long again.
My first drafts tend to be talking heads, though, almost completely abstract since it has little description of the setting. My second drafts, when I’m adding all that in, takes even less time per page, and it’s not difficult for me, because the scene always replays in my head exactly the way it did when I wrote the first draft. (Eventually, I’d like to train myself to get all that done on the first go around.) That said, however, I know I can write close to publishable copy in my first drafts based on the rejections I’ve received — almost all of them have been handwritten, but I’m also talking short stories that were written then submitted with little to no rewriting and not novel-length work.
When it comes to Heinlein’s rules, I tend to bog down on submissions, which is why my focus this year is to tell myself, “Screw it! The hell with what I think about it, I’m mailing this damned thing so I can find out what an editor thinks about it.” Mailed a story just yesterday, in fact, and am now working on getting two more ready to put in the mail. I finished a novel earlier this month, and I’m spending my “down time” getting some older short stories into shape and into the mail, and then I’ll get to work on one or two new short stories before starting another longer piece.
On Heinlein’s rule regarding rewriting, while browsing my copy of Bartlett’s today, I found a fabulous quote by Ogden Nash: “I myself am more and more inclined to agree with Omar and Satchel Paige as I grow older: Don’t try to rewrite what the moving finger has writ, and don’t ever look over your shoulder.”
Ahh, the choice of words. Churn. Crank. Toss-out. All little leaks in our thinking as to how we perceive our own writing when we go against the deep myths.
And what I find even more interesting is no reader ever cares how fast or slow or painfully or “cranked out” some writer wrote a story if it is entertaining. It’s why English teachers never teach a writer’s real life and speed. Better to just let the student think all stories were written slowly and worked over dozens of times.
The quality of a story has nothing at all to do with the production methods of the story. Write slow and write crap, write fast and write crap, write standing on your head and win a Pulitzer. Doesn’t matter, and thus why most writers in public should never, ever talk about their writing methods. No one really cares and we all do it differently and my way is not a good way for anyone else but me.
“almost all of them have been handwritten” — by that I meant the rejections were handwritten.
I just wanted to say that I found Dean, and Laura and Steve Perry’s comments fascinating. Particuarly Laura’s. I think that it’s interesting that Laura’s pace is a slower one, while her dad’s is faster (at least it seems so to those of us on the outside). I guess that shoots down the whole myth about writers being born not made.
And because inquiring minds want to know, here’s my two cents on the whole speed thing: For the most part, my speed tends to be a fairly quick one. I’m usually around 1500 words an hour. Then I need a break. I have to get up and move around. What I’d be interested in hearing about from the everyone is how much thinking about the story/planning you do before you write. I tend to be different on each project. I have to workout the…logic of the story, I guess you’d call it. Then I’m off to the races. Strangley enough 1500 words holds pretty consistent, though. I get up move around and think about the story more. Usually I need at least an hour so that my brain doesn’t feel like mush.
I definitely haven’t had any 9000 word days yet, but I’ve around 6000. At that point my brain is definitely mush-a-fied. I’ve also found that I need around 500 words to get the gears going. Up until then it’s like pulling teeth. I actually had to work at things for awhile before I realized this. There were times in the past when I didn’t meet my word count goals because I thought that ‘the words just aren’t flowing’ or ‘why am I having so much trouble with this story?’ Now I know that it’s just part of my process (at least at this point) and keep going.
Again thanks to everyone for shining some light on this whole crazy, cool profession.
Steve
Steve, I’m primarily a short story writer–I’ve sold 800+ in various genres–and I rarely plan stories before I write. I usually sit down with an opening line or opening scene in mind and go from there.
Of course, this means I have several hundred stories-in-progress waiting to be completed because I need to think through a plot point or two.
(And, no, these are not abandoned manuscripts or false starts; they’re just unfinished manuscripts that I’ll get back to later. For example, last night I added 1,000+ words to a story I started in 2008 and earlier this month I sold a story I wrote in three sessions–the first session in 2007, the last session in January.)
Thanks Dean & Laura. Dean, I downloaded and listened to the “Show Me The Money” talk by Brenda Hiatt from RWA (it wasn’t a panel, though, so maybe this isn’t the one you were recommending). It’s some basic contract stuff, but at this point that’s still very good stuff for me. The average earn-out figures with many of the (small) romance publishers are scary bad:
http://www.brendahiatt.com/id2.html
But many of them are not too terrible (like around $16 or $17K), one is not bad ($23K), and one seems good ($38K).
If you have any other RWA talk recommendations, I’m all ears. I see there’s both a ’08 and an ’09 version of a “Chat with Nora Roberts.”
Laura, thanks for sharing your experience and speaking up for us slowpokes! I’ll probably always be a rewriter/reviser, with novels at least, but I really enjoy that process and I’m wired for it.
@ Steve Lewis: Although I’ve yet to be published, here’s my response to your question: I often do no planning whatsoever. In fact, I often have the barest of ideas in mind when I start a story, sometimes just an image of a character or a scene, sometimes a particular myth that I find intriguing, and I just start writing and plow right through to the end. (I’m currently taking a course on Classical Mythology, so I expect that to have an influence on future stories; I’m a huge fan of mythology anyway, having books in my personal library on Classical, British, Norse, Celtic, Amerind, and even Maaori myths.)
Late last year, I tried something completely different. To come up with an idea, I used the method Damon Knight, in his Creating Short Fiction, said Vonda N. McIntyre used to come up with the idea for her novel Dreamsnake. Then I did a little research on the things suggested by the words I’d come up with. I decided I wanted the main character to be something like the monomaniacal characters found in several of Poe’s short stories, so I pulled out my Poe collection and reread all the stories I could find with monomaniacal characters to get a handle on that idea. Then, keeping in mind all the points outlined in Algis Budrys’s Writing to The Point, I drew up a brief outline, and then started writing. (I love that little book. Although I’ve read Poetics, Budrys’s fleshing out of Aristotle’s ideas has made the biggest difference in my writing.)
The idea generation, looking up the words and then thinking about what they suggested to me, took, perhaps, 15 minutes, no more than 30 tops. The research took an hour or two. The reading of Poe’s stories — there were six in all — 60-90 minutes. The outlining of my story maybe 15-30 minutes, done in bed, just before I went to sleep. So that was perhaps 3-4.5 hours of planning for what amounted to a 9500-word short story. The writing of the story itself took 5 or 6 days. I rather liked the result, too, considering that for years I’ve never planned a single story. I’ve not yet tried this with any of my novels, however.